Easiest Way to Use Google Analytics 4

Brief History of Google Analytics

If you work in any business with an online presence you’ve probably interacted with Google Analytics before. It’s been the go-to analytics platform for almost 2 decades and it’s powering over 60% of all sites on the web.

The first version launched in 2005 with the acquisition of the analytics software company, Urchin. They pioneered how we track traffic online and invented the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) system of modifying URLs to include tracking parameters. Those parameters (still used today) help group all the different kinds of traffic sources so analytics tools can organize and display your traffic data into easily digestible reports. 

By far the most popular version of Google Analytics was the third release launched in 2012 called Universal Analytics. It had new features like being able to track people from mobile phones to desktop computers and more customizable reports. From 2012 to the summer of 2023 Universal Analytics (UA), it was a reliable and relatively easy-to-use source of site traffic data. Well, shit hit the fan in July of 2023 when Google decided to overhaul the entire platform, introducing GA4 (4th version) to the world.

The consensus seems to be that this version sucks. Harder to navigate, have to dig deeper for simple reports, not as powerful. It makes sense when something is used for so long without change, then introducing a very different platform is almost always going to be received negatively. But I’m here to tell you GA4 doesn’t have to suck. After spending a lot of time with it this year it’s actually still very powerful and with a little work Google Analytics can be your best friend again. 

Easiest Way to Install Google Analytics on Your Site

First is the setup, if you already have GA4 installed and don’t have any tracking issues skip to my top 5 reports. If not here’s a dead simple guide to set up it for the first time. 

Step 1 - Go to analytics.google.com and login with your google account

Step 2 - You’ll be prompted to create a property right away or if you already have property navigate to the Admin gear icon in the bottom left

Step 3 - Click Create Property.

Step 4 - Enter the name of the website you’ll be tracking and the country/timezone you’re in. The timezone you set you should be the same as the one in your backend to track payments. 

Step 5 - Select Currency. 

Step 6 - answer the questions then click create Property

Step 7 - Select Web property if its a standard site

Step 8 - enter your website URL and the name of the site then Create Stream

Step 9 - If you use Google Tag Manager you can enter the Measurement ID directly into GTM when you’re creating a new tag for GA4. If you’re not using Google Tag Manager you’ll have to to click View tag instructions and either install via a website builder (Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, etc) or you can Install Manually and send that code to a developer on your team to set up on your site. 

Step 10 - You’re in! You should see traffic coming to your site now. To check it, head back to your Google Analytics account and click on Reports then Realtime to see if it’s working correctly. A few more configuration steps below. 

Step 11 - Navigate to Admin again then click Data collection and modification. Set the Event Data and User data to 14 months, this will let you see more data when working with the exploration reports we’ll talk about later in the post. 

Step 12 - If you have multiple websites you want to track within this single property, you can add them by going back to Data collection and modification then click Data streams. Click on the stream you just created then scroll down to the Configure tag settings. From there click on Configure your domains. Add a condition and keep Match type as contains, then just put in as many root domains as you want to track (dont need subdomain or www). Click Save.

Step 13 - Excluding internal traffic. In the same window you were in Step 12 (Configure tag settings), click Show More then Define internal traffic. Click create then set the Rule name as the location of your office and input the IP address. You can do this for any location where you have a good amount of employees in one location so that IP traffic doesnt affect your reports. 

Step 14 - If you want to exclude any websites like login redirect or payment processors like paypal or stripe, click in the same window you were in Step 13 (Configure tag settings), click Show More then List unwanted referrals. Enter in the domains you want to exclude then hit save. 

Step 15 - There ya have it! You’ve done a complete set up of GA4 and are ready to start building reports. 

Top 5 Reports You Can Copy

Ok now let’s dive into my top 5 reports with step-by-step instructions on how you can build them in your own GA4 account

First up the Source/medium reports - the most basic report in GA4 for marketers, by creating as an exploration we can get a lot more granular with the filtering.

Step by step on how to build it:

Step 1. Start by accessing your Google Analytics (GA) account and navigating to the reporting section.

Step 2. Create a new report by clicking on "Explore" and selecting a blank report to start from scratch.

Step 3. Choose "line chart" as the report type.

Step 4. Rename the report to "Session Source Medium" to reflect the data it will display.

Step 5. Select "Sessions" as the metric to be displayed in the report.

Step 6. Import the dimension "Session Source Medium" to display the sources and mediums that are driving traffic to your website.

Step 7. Double click on "Session Source Medium" and then on "Sessions" to display the traffic from different sources and mediums in the line chart.

Step 8. To diagnose spikes in traffic to specific pages, you can add "Landing Page" and importing it into the report.

Step 9. When analyzing a specific product page's performance, use the "Landing Page" dimension to filter the data for the desired page. For example, filter by landing page containing the name of the specific product page.

Step 10. For further analysis, consider bookmarking and saving the report for future reference.

By following these steps you can build a report in Google Analytics to analyze the sources, mediums, and landing pages that are driving traffic to your website, as well as to diagnose traffic spikes and evaluate the performance of specific product pages.

Second report is what I look at when trying to diagnose which campaigns are causing a certain traffic spike or dip. We’re going one level deeper than the last report and looking at traffic broken down by just the campaign name.

Step by step on how to build it:

Step 1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the reporting section.

Step 2. In the reporting section, locate the "session source medium" data that we looked at in the first report and select the timeframe for the last 28 days.

Step 3. Right-click on the tab above the report and click duplicate, which will add a new tab for your specific source medium analysis.

Step 4. Give the new tab a clear name, such as "Google CPC," to indicate that the analysis will focus on traffic from this specific source medium.

Step 5. Use the option to segment the data within the report. Create a new segment called "Google CPC" and apply the filter to include only traffic from the "Google CPC" source medium.

Step 6. Add the necessary dimensions to the report, such as "session campaign," to further analyze the traffic by campaign.

Step 7. Double-click or drag to break down the data by campaign and focus on analyzing the top 10 campaigns within the "Google CPC" segment.

Step 8. Pay close attention to any spikes in traffic within specific campaigns. Regularly review this report daily or weekly so you know of any significant changes to traffic and exactly where it came from for each channel and campaign.

Step 9. Duplicate the tabs out for all of your top channels, such as meta CPC, social, affiliate, and referral traffic. Duplicate the process and tailor the segments and filters accordingly for each channel.

Step 10. Ensure that the report is saved and easily accessible for daily monitoring. You can save the report in Google Analytics and bookmark it for easy access, allowing you to regularly track the performance of different channels and campaigns.

There you have it, go deeper into source/mediums by segmenting by each channel’s campaign performance. 

Third is the Referring URL report. Use this to see which domains are referring you traffic to which pages.

Step by step on how to build it:

Step 1. Open Google Analytics and navigate to the Explore section. Choose to create a new exploration and select "Free form" for the type of exploration.

Step 2. Leave the visualization as table. Title the report as "Full Referring URL Report."

Step 3. Add the metric "sessions" to the report. Include the dimensions "page referrer 1st" and "landing page plus query string."

Step 4. Double click on "page referrer 1st" and then "landing page" to arrange them as the two rows in the table, with "sessions" as the metric.

Step 5. Identify and remove any blank or not set values in the report to ensure accurate data analysis.

Step 6. Apply filters to exclude not set values for the landing page as the query string. Exclude referring domains from self-referrals, such as the website itself. Exclude page referrers related to search engines to focus on external sources.

Step 7. Use a regex formula to eliminate all blank values from the report.

Step 8. Customize the display by adjusting the number of rows shown and the order of columns to best visualize the referring pages and their activity.

Step 9. Save and bookmark the report for future reference.

This report is great at seeing exactly which external pages are driving traffic to your website. You’d be surprised how many companies don’t look first at who’s currently driving traffic to their site that they don’t know about and how they can get more of it. 

The fourth report is my personal fav, the cohort exploration report. Cohort is just a fancy word for a segment of customers or users, usually looked at in weekly or monthly groups. I use this to measure success of each campaigns by looking at total profit driven from each cohort by channel.

Step by step on how to build it:

Step 1. Open Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and go to the Explorer section.

Step 2. Navigate to the template gallery and select the cohort exploration template.

Step 3. Adjust the date range to the desired period, for example, the last couple of months such as December.

Step 4. Select the event you want to analyze, in this case, purchases, and specify the metric you want to measure, such as gross purchase value.

Step 5. Under cohort inclusion, select the event (e.g., purchase) for users who made their first purchase in the week of the cohort.

Step 6. Set the return criteria such that the users had to make another purchase in the same cohort being analyzed.

Step 7. Segment the data by channel, source, and medium, specifically for the campaigns you are spending money on.

Step 8. Utilize specific filters to narrow down the data. For example, in the video, a filter for Google CPC (Google Ads) is applied.

Step 9. Add the metric for gross purchase revenue and break down the data by campaign so that you can analyze the profitability of each campaign.

Step 10. Analyze the data to see the total gross purchase revenue generated by the users from the campaigns and calculate the profitability.

Step 11. Export the data to Google Sheets and filter it by specific campaigns to get the total revenue generated and calculate the profitability based on the amount spent and profit margin.

Step 12. Finally, analyze the LTV (lifetime value) to CAC (customer acquisition cost) ratio to determine the success and profitability of the campaigns.

Boom! Export these cohorts regularly for each channel you’re spending money in to understand customer quality and how fast it would take for you to make your acquisition costs back. 

The fifth and final is the funnel exploration report, great for seeing where drop-off is in your cart checkout flow.

Step by step on how to build it:

Step 1. Open Google Analytics (GA) 4 home and select "Explore".

Step 2. Next, select "Funnel Exploration".

Step 3. Customizing the funnel:

   - Delete the standard steps given and keep "purchase" as the final step.

   - Add the following steps:

     - Step 1: "Product View" (labeled as "view item")

     - Step 2: "Add to Cart"

     - Step 3: "Begin Checkout"

Step 4. Once you've added these steps, zoom in to view the funnel in more detail.

Step 5. Analyze the percent of users at each step, observing the conversion rates between steps. This will help identify weaknesses or areas for improvement within the checkout flow.

Step 6. To address lower conversion rates on mobile devices:

   - Create a segment for mobile cart abandons to target users who abandoned their carts on mobile devices.

   - Build an audience from this segment and use it for retargeting in Google Ads, offering special incentives or promotions to encourage them to complete the purchase.

Step 7. Lastly, consider analyzing data by device category and country:

   - Identify top-performing countries for conversion rates, and channel your efforts towards targeting users in these countries.

   - You can also explore breaking down the data by medium, source, and channel to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior and improve retargeting efforts.

Before you start any new marketing campaigns make you understand your checkout process. This report will help you find out where the leaks are and how you can fix them. 

So you now know how to set up GA4 on your site and build the top reports to get you started on better understanding your business. There’s so much more you can do within GA4 but most people overcomplicate it. Having a good grasp of the basics can get you 80% of the way there. Keep it simple, keep in moving.